By Domenica Di Piazza, Editorial Director, TFCB

Science writer extraordinaire, Fred Bortz, feeds me a regular stream of links to amazing science stories. The latest is related to the recent announcement that scientists have found a bacterium in Mono Lake (above) in California that can live on arsenic, a chemical no one previously suspected could sustain life-forms. The discovery has the scientific community abuzz, as it suggests that life can exist in ways, and perhaps in places, we never imagined possible.

On this theme of life beyond Earth, Dr. Fred recently wrote Astrobiology (cover at left) for our Lerner imprint Cool Science series. In the book, he discusses the possibilities of extraterrestrial life and the ways scientists think about and research the idea.

Check out Dr. Fred’s blog entry on the latest arsenic-based life-forms experiment and read more about it on the New York Times site. It’s amazing stuff!

And don’t forget to check back next week for more from TFCB.